


Plain Jane

by NoirAngel011



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Mike and El, matchmaker max, modern day AU, what if
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 17:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoirAngel011/pseuds/NoirAngel011
Summary: El has had her eye on Mike for a while now.Mike had never given the girl a second glance.Or: what happens when you love somebody that doesn't love you back.





	1. Chapter 1

It was a normal day at Hawkins High. Everybody was going about their day, talking to friends and attending their classes. Except for El Hopper.

She was hidden behind a bush, watching students go by. Her best friends sat next her, rolling her sky blue eyes hard.

"What are we doing El?!" Max was getting fed up with El's overdramatic crushes. Last week she had been head over heals for Dustin Henderson, this week, she was after his best friend.

"Just wait." El foused on the crowd of students walking towards the parking lot.

It was lunch break and El was spying on a boy, and had dragged her best friend Max into this mess because "She knew his best friend" though she knew nothing about this Wheeler boy in particular.

He was a tall, lanky boy with freckles and dark brown- black hair. His eyes were a deep and rich brown that El could get lost in.

He was sitting at a table outside with three other boys. Of course, El was into the biggest nerds of the whole school.

Max had to go along with her plan, she didn't want to lose the only friend she had. With the move from California, making friends had been hard. She had always not been very good a social skills. But El seemed to really look up to her, moving into Hawkins from Indianapolis just after Max's own move.

The two girls could not be more different, and that was what led them to be spying on a boy from behind a bush. After this, people would sure think that they were stranger than strange itself could ever be.

The smallest boy in the group seemed to have noticed them and their bickering, he was continuing to send them strange glances. Will was always the observent one, and the two girls  biggest threat of they wanted to stay hidden undercover.

They really hoped he just assumed it was his imagination, they didn't need to become known as the weird and creepy girls that spied on boys during lunch. That would just be awful.

The two girls watched closely as Mike got up and threw his lunch away, sitting back down at the table to talk to his friends.

El wasn't the only one who was spying though.

A month ago, El had found out that Max had a crush on Lucas Sinclair, and had been teasing her ever since. Now the redhead had a perfect view of his smiling perfect face.

They were decent friends, eye had worked on a English project together and had devolped a small friendship. Lucas did indeed like her, as a friend if course.

The bell was soon to ring as the girls silently crept away from their hiding place.  Maybe they could try again later.

oOo

The first time Mike saw El Hopper, he thought nothing of her. She was a normal high school girl with brown hair and brown eyes, nothing special.

She dressed like every other kid, she talked like every other kid,and acted like every other kid, she was just on fact a normal kid.

Her best friend was Maxine Mayfield. And Lucas had a crush on her.

He was completely obsessed, aoarntly she was perfect and could do no wrong in his eyes.

When she spray painted the principals car after school one day, Lucas thought it was really cool.

When she beat the shit out of her step brother one week, Lucas thought she was beautiful.

Why or how he thought these things were beyond Mike Wheeler's comprehension of the world.

He had never had to think about that curly haired girl until now.

He knew that she was spying on him, but he pushed it aside. It was probably just Max spying on Lucas and dragging El into her schemes.

He sat at a picnic table with all his friends talking about their latest D&d campaign. The girls were hidden behind him in a bush.

He and will seemed to be the only ones that could hear the blatent bickering. Someone was obviously fed up with the bullshit stunt they were pulling, if you could even call it a stunt.

The bell rang and he went to his next class with Lucas, talking to him about going to see SOLO when school let out for the summer.

Unfounatly, Max was in Lucas and Mike's math class, which was where they were heading. When they arrived, she was one of the only students not there.

It wasn't uncommon for her to skip classes, she did it all the time. She had been given detention so many times it was a daily routine for her.

But Mike was shocked to we someone else talking to the teacher. It was El.

"She isnt in this class, why is she here?" Lucas whispered, taking his seat in The front next to Mike and next to Max's empty desk.

Mr Brown cleared his throat.

"We have a new student for this class. This is El Hopper." He introduced the curly haired girl to the class.

She shuffled forward, taking a seat in the open desk next to where Max would have sat.

That was weird, why was El here if Max wasn't.

All Mike Wheeler knew was there was no way he would get with a girl as plain and El Jane Hopper.

(Now don't ask how he knew her middle name...)


	2. Chapter 2

 

It was school out and four boys were walking towards the bike racks. Two girls were crouched in a bush once again.

  
During Math period, Max had gotten Mike's locker code and the girls were waiting for him to leave so they could sneak back into the building. Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will were boarding their bikes and taking off down the road, heading their respective directions.

  
Max and El hopped up from behind the bush and raced back inside the Hawkins high school main building. The two snuck along the walls heading to the junior locker section.

  
Mike's locker was easy to find, being very close to the front of the section. Max took a piece if paper from her pocket and entered the code, 2 7 39 41.

  
The green locker swung open, revealing to them all of Mike's school related and personal items.  
Here were basic things there, like textbooks and notepads, pens and pencil boxes, erasers and one lonely empty broken water bottle, laying on the floor of the small locker.

  
There were also some gems among the school required items. Mike had a baseball sitting up on the top shelf, as well and pictures of him and his friends on the inside of his door.

  
The most interesting thing to Max and El was a phone number. It was one neither if them recognized, written on a torn scrap of notebook paper that appeared to be torn from the edge if a composition notebook.

  
El pocketed it and the two continued to search.  
As Max picked up a fruit chew from the floor of the locker, a object rolled forward from being pushed back against the wall of the locker, tucked away in the dark pitch black shadows.

  
It was a purple pencil with a pink feather at the tip, blue glitter was sealed in by plasic and moved when the pencil was turned. At the top of the pencil was teethmarks.

  
Max remembered the pencil belonging to El, being the only one she used in her early days in Hawkins, after a fe weeks however she lost it and after that forgot about the pencil she had used so much.

  
Max held it up to El, who was scanning the pictures for anything out if the ordinary. El gasped as she saw the purple glitter pencil, gently taking it from Max's outstretched hand.

  
She turned it over in her palm, examining the teethmarks and glitter that spun in different directions with her every movments.

  
El held out a candy wrapper she had found, containing a string of what seemed to be random numbers.  
Max stared at the string of code for a few moments before flipping it over to see the printing on the back. Apparently Mike was into Tootsie Rolls.

  
Max pulled out the phone number and held it next to the numbers, searching endlessly for a small connection. After finding none she pocketed them both, turning to her curly haired friend.

  
El gripped her pencil tightly as she slammed the locker shut, turning to Max and muttering, "We've got some work to do..."

  
***

  
Mike walked down the stone path with the boys, heading too the bike racks.  
It was strange Max had never shown up to class, she normally did after ten minutes, always being late rather than absent.

  
El was surprisingly very smart, be able to answer some of the most difficult questions in a matter of seconds, while Mike took longer to work them out in his head.

  
Maybe she was more than she seemed.  
Nah.  
Don't kid yourself, Wheeler, She just another girl.

  
He hopped on his bike and followed the guys out the parking lot, but for some reason he felt like so done was spying on him from behind, staying very secretive.

  
***

  
Back at El's house, the girls laid everything out on the coffee table.  
The pencil didn't seem to be much, Mike had probably found it on the ground and tossed it in his locker and forgot about it. He most likely had no idea who it belonged to. No idea who's teethmarks surrounded the top.

  
The phone number was a lead, so Max and El made a call, using El's phone of course.  
(765)- 739- 5271.

  
Her phone rang. And rang. And continued too ring some more. It was in the fifth ring someone picked up.

  
Max recognized the voice imediatly as soon as the boy said "Hello".  
She was quick to end the call, pushing El's pink phone off the countertop and breathing slightly harder than normal.

  
" That was extremely close. To close. Block that number. " Max began to slow her breathing as El stood up to retrieve her phone.

  
"Who was that?" El asked, going to her history and blocking the number the two girls had just dialed.

  
"Billy" Max laid her head down on the tabletop. Why would Mike have Billy's phone number in his locker. As far as either girl knew, Mike didn't know Billy "The Devil" Hargrove, who previously had been king of Hawkins high when the family had moved to Indiana three years prior.

  
Next was the number code. It seemed to be really complicated.  
33 5 44, 7777 22?  
What in the world did that mean?! It was a scramble of numbers with no meaning. A blank lead. Nothing.

  
El scanned the code, to find nothing hidden in the numbers. Maybe they would come back to it later.  
Max looked at El, then back to the code lying on the coffee table, attempting to decipher the cryptically hidden clue.

  
Max threw the scrap piece of notebook paper onto the counter. It was to frustrating to think about. What in the name of hell could the random numbers mean?

***

 

Mike was looking through his locker the next day. It seemed as though things had been moved around.

  
His old water bottle was now on the top shelf instead if the floor, his textbooks were in a different order and his nitbooks had been switched from their position on the top shelf to sitting on the floor, tucked away in the shadows.

  
Someone had gone through his locker.

  
And he wouldn't put it past El Hopper to have done it.  
First, she was spying on him at lunch, then she suddenly showed up in his AP Trigonometry class, then things in his locker were switched around.

  
But she couldn't have done this alone.  
She had to have help.

  
And he knew exactly who was behind the helping part, exactly the girl who was absent from a certain class El was in.

  
Now came the question,  
How did Max get his locker combination?


End file.
